


Your Surviving Husband

by haemat



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 00:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10933503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haemat/pseuds/haemat
Summary: "Tell Julia I said I love her."In the aftermath of a great upset in the astral plane, Kravitz fulfills his end of a promise, and Julia does not much appreciate his tone.





	Your Surviving Husband

"Kravitz!" Magnus calls, stopping the Grim Reaper in his tracks just as he was about to step through the portal he summoned to return to the astral plane.

Kravitz turns, Maureen's spirit stopping beside him. "Yeah?"

"Tell Julia," Magnus says carefully, "I said I love her." He stares intently into Kravitz's eyes, as they widen slightly, surprised by the sudden sobriety.

Kravitz, for his part, breaks into a smirk. "Alright," he says, "there's a lot of Julias over there, but -- heh, nevermind, I'm kidding, I know who you're talking about."

The lightness of his tone doesn't pass to Magnus. "Thank you," he says simply, quietly.

"Alright." Kravitz turns back to Maureen. "Maureen, y'ready to go?"

Maureen nods as if she's trying to convince herself as well. "Yes, I..." She gives her son one last glance, but she addresses everyone. "I'll see you later."

-

In the astral plane stretches a great body of water. The water is unlike the water we see in most realms in which the living reside. It swirls brilliant pinks, aquas, ambers, and shimmers and swirls in the bright light of a single, softly shining sun. There are countless souls residing in the astral plane, each a pinprick that shines as bright as the sun in the sky, but they shine in varying intensity. Sometimes, a soul seems to glow in a trace outline of the person they were in life, when they remember who they were in our plane or in one of the countless other planes that make up our universe.

And there, a black blot on the sun, an austere and structured -- in a way the rest of the astral plane is not -- floats a dark prison, a reminder to everyone the price of trying to escape. Eternity spent in solitude. The worst fate of all, a mark of a Goddess known for her severity. The eternal stockade.

Julia doesn't much like looking at it. She generally tries to pretend it's not there, preferring to shine her light within the warm waters of the astral sea. It's not that she doesn't want to think about others' pain, it's just very... difficult, when there's nothing she can do. They knew what they were doing when they tried to escape, she knows this. Still, she feels it's a cruel punishment, unequal to the crime.

But the Raven Queen is nothing if not strict. All crimes in the astral plane are met with the same punishment.

Julia's idle fantasies of breaking everyone out of the stockade have to remain idle fantasies. But today, they feel especially treasonous. After today, her pity for the prisoners has taken a different form.

Murmurs echo throughout the waters of the astral plane. Figures outlined in white flash rapidly as whispers spread amongst the souls here. It's no wonder. The entire plane felt it when the most horrific act of necromancy was enacted against the prisoners of the stockades, and the entire population of the prison attempted to find a way to come back to life again.

"I saw my sister, I saw her tear through the-- the very _essence_ of this plane, I saw her..."

"We all saw it."

"Some of us-- Some of us that weren't in the stockades, even they tried to break free."

"Did they all go back to the stockades?"

"I saw a brilliant light at the prison, that must have been them."

"They shouldn't have even tried. Fools, all of them."

Julia tries to tune out the hurried murmurs of discussion as she looks through the gathered crowd for her father. If he got caught up in the chaos...

She flashes her image and her face appears, worried, scared. Trying not to think that her father may be in the eternal stockades now. It's difficult to hide it even without that form, her ball of light that is her soul shivering in the air. She flashes again, and calls his name.

"Dad! Steven-- Steven Waxman! Dad!" She flashes again and again, turning to a different direction each time, darting between figures, many of whom are also searching for their loved ones. The crowd swirls erratically, lights flashing from every direction.

She doesn't find him before the room falls still and a portal opens up in the sky. The Grim Reaper steps through -- Kravitz -- holding his dark image steady in a show of power. It's always clear which soul is his. With him comes one of her fellow souls. Julia doesn't know her name. She's never spoken to her.

"Today," Kravitz says, and the noise instantly settles, "has been a real fuck up for the lot of you."

Julia settles, scanning the crowd for any indication of her father, but staying still now. She wants to hear what he says. They all want to hear what he says.

"Everyone who did not take the opportunity to break out of this realm, I'd commend you, but really, that's the least I could ask for," he says, rubbing his temples. It's all for show. He has no veins to run blood through. "Some common decency."

Someone in the crowd near Julia mutters something under their metaphysical breath.

"Now, I can't possibly scan the list of each and every name here to find out which of you just, just _went for it_ , so consider this a get out of jail free card. You don't really deserve it, but it's, quite simply, impossible to know how many of you slipped through the cracks, as it were." Kravitz's face starts to peel away, revealing a skull with glowing eyes beneath. Julia knows it's just his flair for dramatics. He's not really a skeleton, and she's not really scared. "But if I learn any one of you was part of that, you're not getting away with it quite so easy."

A hum descends over the gathered crowd, whispers breaking throughout. Kravitz snaps, then, to regain everyone's attention, and with it, he's back in his flesh-facsimile form.

"One last thing," he announces. "Julia Burnsides? There's a Julia Burnsides here, I'm sure of it. She's not in the stockades, is she...?" He scans the crowd.

Julia doesn't have a heart anymore, but she still feels it stop. She hasn't done anything to attract Kravitz's attention... has she?

"Oh, come on, you're not in trouble, Julia. Just, just show yourself, alright, I've got a message for you," Kravitz complains. "I'm doing you a favor."

Hesitantly, Julia's image appears, outlined in white, around the light that is her soul. It flickers a little, but it appears, and Kravitz picks it out of the crowd nigh-instantly.

"Ah, there you are," he says, smiling. It looks predatory, though she suspects he's trying to seem friendly, probably. "Everyone, just calm down and-- do whatever it is you do, I don't want all of you watching me deliver a message, it's just unnecessary."

The crowd slowly starts to disperse, but Julia approaches Kravitz. The messenger of the Raven Queen herself, life and death's liaison and bounty hunter. And he has a message for her. What could the Raven Queen have to say to Julia Burnsides, of all souls in her dominion?

"Julia!" she hears a familiar voice call as she makes her way through the crowd, and she stops, relief filling her all at once. Her father -- he's alright. He's here. He reaches her, and her image takes his imagined hand. Whatever message Kravitz has for her, her father can hear as well.

"Julia Burnsides," Kravitz says her name, as if it were a long-awaited reunion. It's not, she's not -- she's hardly spoken with him. She knows him only because everyone knows him.

"Julia had no part in that breakout, Kravitz," Steven interrupts. "I know her. She's always accepted her place here."

"Dad..."

"This only very slightly has anything to do with that," Kravitz says, waving his hand of the matter. "I had a run-in with someone you are, ah, very familiar with, let's put it that way."

He's really beating around the bush with this one. Julia's image puts her hands on her hips.

"You could spit it out," she says. "I'd prefer if you did. You're giving me anxiety palpitations. I've got an allergy to anticipation."

Kravitz barks a laugh, and she tries her best not to flinch even as she sees him give her father a start with the noise.

"Yes, well, alright. Your surviving husband did me something of a favor, and I'm not one to let myself owe anyone anything." He coughs slightly into his fist, looking very much uncomfortable. Julia, meanwhile, is still trying to process what he's saying, but he does continue. "For your consideration: Magnus Burnsides still loves and thinks of you."

Julia's face is still, unmoving. She's acutely aware that her veins are dry, then shortly aware she has no veins at all. It feels like a small thing, what he's doing, a very simple message, one that must have already been understood if she knew Magnus half as well as she knows she does. It's not really the message that's important here, is it? It's what it's couched in: her husband is out there, which she knew, but he's doing something that brings him into contact with the Grim Reaper. Not only that, but to help him wrangle the escaped souls -- and that's what it must have been that he did, right?

Yet something about this message feels like a threat is underlying it.

"What brought you in contact with my husband?" Julia says smoothly.

"Work," Kravitz says, with a sigh. But then he peers at her closer, and a fanged grin stretches across his face.

"Yet he's not here," Julia observes.

"Of course," Kravitz says, conjuring up a floating desk and chair made of a dark wood, each carved with regal attention. Made to bring to mind mahogany, she can tell from a glance. He rests his elbows against the desk and leans forward in his seat, hands clasping together. Two cushioned, less ornate but still quite expensive-looking chairs appear behind her and Steven. "Please, take a seat."

After a short, hesitant pause, they both float down into their seats.

"Your husband, Magnus," Kravitz begins, "has died a grand total of 19 times without once crossing to the astral plane. Which is, as you can imagine, a big problem for me. I thought you might like to be aware of that going forward. I cannot say whether this occurred prior to your meeting him or long after you came here, but from the look on your souls I imagine it wasn't while you were together."

"No," Steven says stiffly. "It wasn't."

There's another pause, most likely for effect -- Julia knows how Kravitz's type works -- and then Kravitz begins to say something else, but Julia cuts him off quickly.

"I know my husband," she says.

"...Yes, I am well aware--"

"No," she says with finality. Julia can sense this conversation is turning into something ugly, and she wants to make herself very clear. "He can be reckless, even foolhardy, and I imagine he has hardly changed since my passing. I'm sure he's never thought of his wellbeing first once in his whole life. I know my husband, and I know no matter how completely stupid dangerous something is, he won't think twice of running headlong into it if it means no one else has to. And I also know, now, that he helped you with something that could have been the greatest disaster known to the astral plane."

Kravitz purses his lips, unreadable, but he can't hide his quick glance at the floating fortress a ways off from the three of them. But he remains quiet, waiting patiently for her to finish.

"And I also know," Julia says, "that he would never marry someone that would let someone like you run circles around them. And I will not." Her image is steady now, and she brings her hands down on his desk, standing once more in the same motion. "You are not going to accomplish anything by trying to hold my husband's actions over my head. I have never once attempted to leave the astral plane, even now. My actions are my own. So, please. Save your breath."

Kravitz watches her stare daggers into his eyes, hands in a facsimile of prayer against his chin. She doesn't know what he's thinking, but she has some good ideas.

"Jules," he finally says, and the nickname comes to her with a flash of anger in her soul, "there's a lot I can do, knowing what crimes Magnus Burnsides has committed against the very nature of our universe. Most of it also falls under the same Venn Diagram as what I will not do. People have a lot of sour opinions of me, but I do like to think of myself as a gentleman." He sighs deeply. "The point is, depending on his actions going forward, you may see your husband here. In the eternal stockades. So I suggest you pray for his recklessness not to lead him down a... yet darker path."

He summons a glass of white wine and takes a long sip.

"Care for a glass, you two?"

She and Steven refuse.

-

Julia has never been a woman of any particular faith. She, like most others in Faerûn, has always accepted that there must be gods out there. She is familiar with a few key names that, culturally, everyone seems to know -- your Pans, your Raven Queens, your Chaunteas, and what have you -- but she's never sought the ear of one of them in prayer. She's not sure which to consult in this case. Perhaps Istus, a name she's heard before, invoked to prove someone's destiny.

Julia isn't sure if she's allowed to pray to Istus. She hardly knows her. But Julia finds a secluded area under the astral sea, an area where it's particularly shining a bright ruby red, and she shuts out the rest of the world and prays.

"If you hear me, Istus," she whispers very quietly, "then I'm sorry. I've never been very inclined to talk to you. That may be a failing on my part. That may be my bad. But I hope that you feel inclined to hear me out.

"My husband is still alive. Somehow. I don't know if you know him, but he's very good at getting himself into very bad situations, and I fear he may have gotten into his worst one yet. Please, please watch over him and make sure he doesn't... do anything to jeopardize his death the way he's jeopardized his life, time and again. Please let me be able to see him when he finally goes, hopefully at a ripe old age, but I know he wouldn't much like that."

Julia feels very warm. The water has always been very comfortable in the astral plane, but right now, it feels like a warm body against hers in a way that she can just barely remember from her life.

She doesn't know what to make of it.

-

A portal opens in the astral plane. Kravitz steps through, as he usually does, but he's wearing something a little different tonight. Rather than his usual robes, he's got on a sharp dress shirt, unbuttoned slightly at the top, with a vest over it. He lingers in his portal as though contemplating something, then starts to walk towards the astral sea when Julia stops him in his tracks.

"Have a nice night?" she says, her image held steady as she smirks at him.

"Yes, not that it's any of your business," he says, actually looking annoyed. He must have been caught off guard to let on any weakness like this, Julia muses.

"I didn't know the Grim Reaper went on dates."

Kravitz narrows his eyes at her, trying to regather his composure. With how she keeps surprising him, though, it's proving difficult. "Who says I had a date?"

"Your enticingly-unbuttoned collar," she says, gesturing to the collar in question. Before Kravitz can defend himself, she continues, "Well? Think there will be a round two?"

Kravitz looks down at his collar and moves almost like he wants to button it, but he thinks better of it and sighs. "I don't know what you're trying to prove here, nor do I particularly want to. I'm a busy man, Jules. Now, if you'll excuse me," he says, attempting to cut the conversation short and walk away. He actually gets about knee-deep into the water before she heads him off again.

Julia knows he's using the nickname to try to put her off. She's talked to him enough times by now to recognize his usual tactics.

"Kravitz, we're all friends here. Tell me something about your night and I'll tell you something about mine," she says, her image rocking back and forth on her heels with her hands clasped behind her back. He gives her a withering look, looking like he's trying to figure out what she could have possibly done with her night that was remotely interesting to him. She exists in a plane where not much excitement tends to occur without him knowing about it.

After a while, he finally sighs, running a hand over his forehead, and he offers, "Wine and pottery classes. He refused to make the vase we were meant to be making and made a bowl instead. It was very..." He stops himself in his tracks, as if he was about to admit something, but instead says, "It was fine. It was a fine evening."

Julia can't help but smile at that.

"Well, since fair's fair," she begins, "I know you have a close relationship with the Raven Queen, so I thought you might find this interesting." From behind her back, she reveals a lovingly crafted bear, whittled from dark, almost-black wood with great care. Curiously, Kravitz leans in closer to look at it, and after Julia lets him, he takes it in his hands and inspects it. On the pad of the back right paw is the carved signature of Magnus Burnsides. This would be a collector's item, if it were a few years ago, back when the Burnsides name was still well-established, synonymous with master craftsmanship. As of now, though, it's simply a well-crafted trinket that Julia has no business having here.

He has to ask. "Where did you get this?"

"Lady Istus thought I might like something to remember him by, until he eventually joins me here," she says simply. As if it's nothing. As if Lady Istus regularly takes a personal interest in souls that reside in the astral plane. Kravitz knows that Magnus, as well as Taako and Merle, were now of particular interest of Istus, but to go out of her way to grant a gift to a dead loved one of theirs... Before he can wonder anymore, Julia laughs, seeing the confusion in his face, and clarifies, "I've been speaking to her a lot lately. She's very thoughtful. I can see why the Raven Queen would like her."

Kravitz sucks in air pointlessly through his teeth, lets it out. "Because I told you to pray for him," he guesses. He hands her back the wooden bear.

"I follow advice sometimes. If I feel like it," Julia says, and, rather than simply take the bear back, she also grabs his wrist and yanks him down, moving close to his ear. "She doesn't think very much of your attempt to unnerve me, Grim Reaper. And neither do I," she says quietly. "And I would think twice about trying to hold your power over me or my father ever again."

Kravitz jerks himself out of her grasp, glaring at her and readjusting his shirt cuffs. But the glare only lasts a moment, and the next second, it's a smirk.

"I learn from my mistakes, Julia," he says. "Have a good night."

"Night, Kravitz."

She hugs the wooden bear figurine to her chest with a smile.


End file.
